CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN WITHDRAWS
FROM PRESIDENTIAL RACE AND ENDORSES HOWARD DEAN
Statement of Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun
CARROLL, IA- I want to thank everybody for your kindness to me,
and for allowing me to participate as a candidate for the
Democratic nomination for president of the United States. This
campaign has been a wonderful learning experience for me, one
that restored my faith in the political process and renewed my
belief in the goodness of the American people.
I am here today to thank those Iowans who were prepared to stand
for me in Mondays’ caucuses, and to ask that you stand instead
for Howard Dean.
Your support is precious to me, and so I make this
recommendation with the most sincerity and thought I have ever
brought to any decision.
Gov. Dean has the energy to inspire the American people, to
break the cocoon of fear that envelopes us and empowers
president Bush and his entourage from the extreme right wing,
and he has a program to put our country back on track to tax
fairness, job creation, balanced budgets and an economy that
works for everyone regardless of sex or race. He has the
experience to know that state and local and national government
have to cooperate and collaborate, and end the destructive game
of monetary musical chairs that creates unfunded mandates and
failing schools. He understands that a real war on terrorism
starts with putting the domestic security of the American people
first. He can “work well with others” around the world and craft
a foreign policy that is neither arrogant nor preemptive, but
that begins with respect and builds on alliances. He takes
seriously our stewardship of the planet and our environmental
responsibilities.
Howard Dean is a Democrat we can all be proud to support.
I am so very grateful to you who have made my candidacy
possible, and who believed, as I did, that my campaign offered
Americans a unique opportunity for progress. When barriers of
gender and race fall in America, our nation is richer for it,
and all Americans will benefit from the opening up of a
reservoir of talent and capacity and contributions and ideas
that have been locked up for too long.
But the funding and organizational disadvantages of a
nontraditional campaign could not be overcome, and so this
campaign was unable to compete effectively or support your hard
work as it should. Continuing would not have been fair to
hundreds of delegates, (especially Congressmen Bobby Rush and
Danny Davis), and thousands of volunteers and millions of
supporters who wanted to give the American people a message of
hope and progress. We were and are determined to give the next
generation of Americans no less than what we inherited for the
last one, and we are committed to opening up our democracy.
We will get there one day. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards
justice.” Progress for our republic will come when we live up to
the ideal of equality and inclusion that is at the heart of the
American dream. The political process is an avenue for building
a more perfect union, if for no other reason that it is, in the
end, a purely mathematical process: with one vote more than the
next guy, you win (most of the time!)
When women run, when people of color run, we open up the
possibility that women and people of color can win. I have a
record of building bridges, bringing people together, and
breaking barriers, and I am proud of my role in breaking new
ground with this campaign. I was able to walk in the footsteps
of my hero, Shirley Chisholm, and we qualified for ballot
position in more states than any woman has ever done in the
history of this country.
So to those of you who believed in this effort, I say, take
heart, you can claim the nobility of moving our country forward,
and of opening up possibilities for all our daughters. I thank
you for your vision and your patriotism.
But today, especially, I ask that you share my view that Gov.
Dean is the candidate best equipped to continue the progress we
need to have, to bring Americans together to renew our country
and restore our privacy, our liberty and our economic security.
His leadership will help us live up to our generational
responsibility.
I am happy to support him, and hope you will stand for him with
the conviction and courage with which you would have stood for
me.
I appreciate your continued support and look forward to dancing
with you at the Inaugural Ball for Howard Dean this time next
year.
Source: Carol Moseley Braun for President Web Site
